Sound in Gaming

Sound is, I think, one of the most overlooked aspects in many games.

Most developers think proper audio for a game means lossless 44khz effects, and a suitable movie-orchestra-esque soundtrack.

They are, of course, wrong. Most video games have shit for music. Me? I turn the stuff off ASAP. I don't feel it builds tension... it just makes things that are actually pertinent that much harder to discern.

What got me thinking about this today, is I screwed around and left my computer plugged into the aux jack of my obscenely powerful (and out of production for several years now) Rio 'executive shelf system'. Why they can't just call it a stereo anymore, I don't know.

This little bitch of a system can literally rattle windows, if fed a track with the proper bassline.

Normally, I'm an offender on ignoring a game's sounds, myself. I keep the stereo run into my XM receiver, and usually have that going in the background. A little while back, though, a friend turned me on to Grooveshark as an alternative to filesharing and such when suggesting songs to each other. Naturally, my PC speakers fucking suck - they're a set of cheapo Logitechs I grabbed four or five years ago when my previous set of shitty speakers went Tango Uniform.

Well, of course you can't listen to music like that... so I have to swap the jack over to run the PC into the Rio for music time.

Had been listening earlier, and forgot and left the computer jacked in when I fired up FO3 this evening to test the latest "TEH SKY IZ FALLZ0RING!" comment on the RR fucking Companions Vault (otherwise known as the bane of my modding existence... I swear every time I take ten minutes to work on something else, someone manages to break it in a new and ever more interesting fashion... you people remind me of the Private given a rubber mallet and locked in a room with an anvil, of metaphor lore).

I was floored by the difference in sounds. I'm so used to the flat, lifeless PC speakers that I had forgotten how much better gunfire sounds when piped through a pair of speakers that each have a 6" woofer built into the side. The crack of the suppressed M14 was almost... realistic.

Not completely, of course. A point for which I'm grateful - even suppressed gunshots throw out upwards of 100db; more than enough to permanently damage your hearing.

More than just that, though, was the ambient noise, and echoes. Oh, the echoes in the Access Tunnels... Gotta give props to Bethsoft for that detail, oh yes.

Got me thinking about old times. The last game that, to me, really had a complete, integrated aural experience was System Shock 2. Which not only did it, but did it in such a way that it would scare the fuck out of you.

Most of you kids probably never played it, being a Windows 95 game and all, but that one was scary game.

Not like FEAR. I picked up FEAR when it was new, and was bored from one end to the other. FEAR relied on lame movie theater tricks to "scare" people - it basically amounted to nothing more than creepy music and things jumping out and going BLARGH! Cheap twitch tactics, and nothing more.

System Shock 2 actually gave you the feeling - when playing with headphones especially - that you were alone on a dead ship, surrounded my cybernetic monsters who wanted nothing more than your head.

It really is a great shame, that games like that are relegated to the days of pixel-y graphics and 256 colors. What that would've been run with HDR, Shader 3.0, and Phys-X support...

DOOM 3 was another one that had potential, but in the end was just being "scary" by making it dark all the time. No atmosphere. I also find it hard to believe that they have interplanetary travel, but can't figure out how to duct-tape a fucking flashlight to a rifle.

I dunno, maybe it's because I'm older now, and have spent the last ten years having it hammered into my head to be aware of my surroundings at all times, but I just don't find modern games to be as immersing.

I'd chalk it up to base nostalgia, but the truth is most games were shit in the 90's, too. Doubly so in the 80's. I swear, the amount of time I spent on 8-bit NES games that were nothing but poorly laid out movie tie-ins...

Anyway.

Just seems like now everyone's about MMO, and doesn't even bother trying to put out a solid single player story-telling event.

Oblivion has its moments... but even it's mostly just the strategically placed sound of wind in the background of some caves.

I hear STALKER is supposed to be good about that sort of thing, but I never did get around to picking it up. Still see Clear Skies here and there on shelves from time to time, but I have a long standing hatred of Prequels. They tend to Retcon way too much. Probably too much exposure to that hack Roddenberry's work...